Payment cards such as credit or debit cards are ubiquitous. For decades, such cards have included a magnetic stripe on which the relevant account number is stored. To consummate a purchase transaction with such a card, the card is swiped through a magnetic stripe reader that is part of a point of sale (POS) terminal. The reader reads the account number from the magnetic stripe. The account number is then used to route a transaction authorization request that is initiated by the POS terminal.
In pursuit of still greater convenience and more rapid transactions at POS terminals, payment cards have more recently been developed that allow the account number to be automatically read from the card by radio frequency communication between the card and a so-called “proximity reader” which may be incorporated with the POS terminal. In such cards, often referred to as “proximity payment cards” or “contactless payment cards”, a radio frequency identification (RFID) integrated circuit (IC, often referred to as a “chip”) is embedded in the card body. A suitable antenna is also embedded in the card body and is connected to the RFID chip to allow the chip to receive and transmit data by RF communication via the antenna. In typical arrangements, the RFID chip is powered from an interrogation signal that is transmitted by the proximity reader and received by the card antenna when the card is brought close to (typically tapped against) the proximity reader.
MasterCard International Incorporated, the assignee hereof, has established a widely-used standard, known as “PayPass”, for interoperability of contactless payment cards and proximity readers.
Contactless payment functionality may be incorporated in other devices besides cards. Such other devices include key fobs, wristwatches, wristbands, and mobile telephones.
It has been proposed that at least some of the capabilities of a POS terminal/proximity reader be incorporated into a mobile telephone, thereby turning the mobile telephone into a merchant device that is able to receive contactless payments from a contactless payment card or from another mobile device that incorporates contactless payment functionality. A merchant device may, for example, be useful for merchants who have a low volume of transactions, or for those, such as a flea market seller, itinerant merchant, taxi driver, etc., who do not have a fixed store location. In mobile-to-mobile transactions, or when a contactless payment card is presented to a merchant device, the latter device plays the part of the proximity reader, and receives the customer's payment card account number from the customer's card or device via wireless communication. The merchant device then initiates an authorization request for a purchase transaction to an acquirer financial institution that is part of a conventional payment system. The merchant device may do so by using the conventional mobile telephone network. After the payment system routes the authorization request to the financial institution that issued the customer's payment card account, a response to the authorization request is returned to the merchant device, and the transaction may be consummated in a similar manner to a transaction which occurs via contactless payment at a POS terminal.
One issue that exists with respect to mobile merchant devices is how to load such devices with merchant-and/or acquirer-specific information required to set up the devices for operation as described above. Loading of a suitable application program into the merchant device may also be necessary. It may be inconvenient or infeasible to load such a program or specific information at the factory or at a mobile telephone store upon the merchant's acquisition of the mobile device. It may also be contemplated to load the programming or specific information into the mobile device “over-the-air” (‘OTA’) via the mobile network, but the necessary computer infrastructure may be expensive and may take a considerable period of time to establish.